Fear opens your eyes. Live to blind it.

- UNKNOWN QUOTE

TWO LETTERS ARRIVED BY NOON, and none of them were worth celebrating. Arguably, both of them were; but I really could only stare at the piece of paper pronouncing my brother dead with more confusion than grief. “There’s no way he of all people—that stubborn mule—is dead,” was of course my first sentence to the messenger, to which the latter got all jittery for no reason (it wasn’t like I was going to stab him, or anything).

I showed the paper to Mercy, who frowned at it.

Xandros managed to peek at it, and looked horrified.

I turned back to the messenger. “There’s a body?” I questioned, frowning.

“It has been confirmed that it is His Late Imperial Highness’,” he replied, head bent into a low bow.

That gave me pause, before a laugh jerked out of me.

“The frontal assault can’t have gotten him,” I said. “He may be a brute, but he’s at least better than that. He had soldiers with him, right? With that big of a moral superiority complex, and that much of an ass for a personality, it’s a wonder he’s survived this long. He can’t just be shot off his high horse like that.”

That was a lot of “can’ts.”

But he couldn’t have.

A long silence, as I tried to rearrange my thoughts.

“Who killed him?” I asked the question.

Even without my Ability, I could hear the hesitation in the messenger’s voice. “I was told that His Late Imperial Highness recognized the current Patrician of Bellum and brought him to an audience in front of His Late Highness. During their conversation, the Patrician managed to escape from his bounds and...strangled the Third Prince to death, Your Highness. The Patrician was executed as per regicide protocol immediately after...Your Highness.”

Strangulation?

“Why didn’t Older Brother use his Ability?” I hissed, the strange title coming back to me. “It’s strangulation, for Gods’ sake. Why did no one kill the guy?” There was uncharacteristic vehemence in my tone.

The messenger’s voice faltered. “I was told, Your Highness, that immediately after, His Late Imperial Highness summoned Lightning—presumably to defend himself—and managed to burn them both in the process.”

“Well, if he wasn’t immune to his Ability, than why would he have it in the fucking first place—” I cut myself off, catching the unusual flash of anger I felt. The mask was cracking, and I sighed in the silence that my abrupt sharpness gave me.

“Sorry for yelling at you,” I said, even though I really didn’t need to apologize. A beat, as the messenger hastily protested that there was no need, and I cut him off. “Why did brother even give him the time of day, then? What was so special about this Patrician?” This was Cyrus. When he wanted revenge, he was a think-first-kill-later-and-then-suffer-consequences type of person, as much as I called him an ass.

“I was told,” the messenger repeated, a bit softer, “that the Patrician was a former lover of the Prince.”

To that, I only had to slap my forehead. “People were always that asshole’s weakness,” I whispered under my breath. But he was dead—by what, someone strangling him? He’d weathered far worse, but, then again, my other brother had died getting shot by an arrow which he could’ve easily avoided—

A body, hammered into the ground. An archer’s amber eyes.

My eyes flung closed, and I inadvertently raised a hand to my forehead. I could feel Mercy’s hand on my shoulder, and I reflexively shook it off.

I was going to crack like this.

Everything else had already stretched me thin, wrung me dry—

I was going to snap like this.

Like I had back in Boreas, like I had back in the Cage…

I crumpled forward as an invisible weight pushed down on me, crouching near the ground before I slowly hugged my knees to my chest. The last thing on my mind was to cry, and it wasn’t that I didn’t have the strength to stand—I took in soft breaths, no sense of anxiety or anger inside my chest, but rather an exhaustion sapping something out of my bones. It happened in the span of seconds, and so I sat on the ground, staring at the ground for a small silence; and then swallowing before I spoke evenly.

“What were his last words?” A smile twitched on my lips. “I’m sure he must’ve said something heroic, right? Or at least written down some sort of majestic will?”

Mercy immediately fell to the ground beside me, sitting cross-legged casually as I said the words, as if we were having a tea party on the floor.

Xandros did the same, although uneasily; and the very, very rattled messenger followed, kneeling on the cobblestones behind the Azareth manor.

“I was made aware that His Late Highness carried around slips of paper that he entrusted to Lady Roxana Evlogia of Doxa,” said the messenger, voice raspy. “It was said that, upon his death, these slips of paper would be distributed to his immediate family.” He rummaged around his satchel and brought out a folded sliver of paper barely the size of my thumb.

“Was mine the smallest?” I asked, lips curving. I took the paper slip with two fingers, examining it before folding my fingers over it. “They said you had two messages,” I said finally, when the surprising wave of bile rising in my throat seceded. “What was the other one?”

The messenger seemed more than jittery. “Her Imperial Majesty, Empress Greta the Great, sent Your Highness a letter.”

After he gave me the letter, bowed, and hightailed it out of there, I closed my eyes and continued to sit on the ground in silence.

“I must’ve eaten something bad,” I commented aloud after a while. “My stomach doesn’t feel good. Must’ve been the candy.”

There was no murmured assent in the darkness around me.

I swallowed again, to moisten my suddenly dry throat.

“Yes,” I repeated, opening my eyes and slowly raising my head towards the sky, “it must’ve been the candy.”

I hadn’t cared about him all that much, had I? Then why—

If I had been there instead of Cyrus he wouldn’t be dead.

If he was there instead of me in Notus, it wouldn’t have been as bad.

If—

I hadn’t even loved the guy. I mean, I did care about him, in the same way that I cared about what happened to any one of my brothers and sisters (because we were a family in name); but I wouldn’t die for him, not really. But he was a Queenscage: he had been through the Cage—seen and slaughtered and came and conquered—the same way I had. He had been Chosen by the Gods and seen their faces, and bore the same curse I did, and in that way the same blood ran through our veins.

This wasn’t a distant relative passing away.

He was—technically, in all aspects—my brother.

And he was dead.

I raised my fist, upon which bruises had already formed from Notus and Zephyr, and held it above the ground, deliberating for a while before letting my fingers lay on the stones. There wasn’t any anger or frustration to let out, I realized, and so it would be pointless.

It was fear I felt in my stomach, scorching my throat, and I interrupted the bile by clearing it.

“Open the other letter, Mercy,” I said. “We have work to do.”

I ignored the order to go to Honos for another hour as I looked at the sarawolf victims. In all honesty, a lot of them had already died overnight, but there were still some left.

The poison had been diluted, sure, but it was still the same deadly stuff that killed upon contact. It had been in the water and food, which meant that it was already in their body and system, and even the luckier ones who’d had a slower rate of infection were already gasping for breath.

“It’s a wolfsbane hybrid,” I explained, after looking at the healthiest ones. “Really, it’s kind of misleading. You usually put sarawolf with a bunch of other poisons to get that quick and lethal effect with the smallest dose possible.”

In the assassin’s trade, that “sarawolf” sarawolf— the kind that would go up from the infected area and along the spine, circling your throat and lungs—was a different kind that meant that even the slightest contact could make you suffocate to death. Even if you recovered, you’d be potentially paralyzed.

I shrugged. “That’s the nastiest stuff, though. This is the slower, more diluted and less effective breed.”

The legionary frowned. “I’ve heard of it. Imperial poison.” The connotation was quite obvious, really, but she skipped over it with a brusque: “Can you get rid of it?”

“There is a cure,” I conceded. And there was. I knew the recipe. “But it keeps the poison within the first stages, and it has to be ingested regularly. It helps you throw up the poison, and the effects will lessen over time, but during that multiple-Daycycle-period there’ll be a lot of deterioration, health-wise. It helps if you have some kind of resistance beforehand, or all in all immunity, but…”

“It’s going to be hard,” guessed the legionary, flatly. “And it takes time and resources you don’t have. Or want to give.”

I inclined my head. “That’s right.”

“Even though you poisoned us in the first place.”

“Yep.”

The legionary’s face showed no sign of hostility, but still my hand crept to my knife as always. Even if she swore an Oath.

“But,” I continued, “I do have on hand several bottles of the instant-death dose, which I’m sure will work fine even if we dilute them a little bit. I also, coincidentally, have a bit of the cure; and I can supervise the treatment of around five people if they take it. But they’ll have to follow me around in order to do that. I won’t order them around or anything, on the condition that they follow an Oath of not harming the Empire’s citizens and all that.”

“You make it sound like a mercy,” sneered the other.

“Because it is,” I said. “At least, the best mercy I can offer you. If I’m feeling generous, maybe I’ll throw in something else; but, right now, I’m working for the Empire’s interests. Which are my own, of course.”

After all, they were only poisoned to get rid of interference in our operation in Azareth. Having two Cohorts marching on a city invaded by Imperials, especially when you were one of said Imperials, complicated things.

And complications were unnecessary.

“You don’t fight for your country, little girl,” responded the legionary. “You fight for yourself. But very well. I understand our existence throws a wrench in your plans—I’m sure we’re the last hope to our conquered people. We’re the promise of help, and for all the Legions speak of honor, there’s little honor can do in this situation. The lethal dose is your way of killing us, isn’t it? You’re only treating five people so you can take them under your wing and crush people’s hopes at freedom.”

I smiled, thinly.

“You would be right,” I conceded, “if this were any other day. It was my plan, yes; and I’m sure the other Duchess in the city would argue in favor of it and carry it out regardless, but today I’ll stay my hand.”

I released my other hand from around my knife behind me, retreating it to its position at the front.

“There’s no hand for me to backstab you with,” I informed her. “You either take it, or you don’t. But I have my own honor. You get to choose how you will take the choices I’ve given you. You should know, though, I don’t ask twice.”

There was too much pride in her eyes.

“I’ll ask the people behind me,” she said quietly, her brittle face softening. “But I’m not infected. I— didn’t eat, that night. So no, I won’t choose.”

I didn’t lower my hand, but extended it.

“Seraphina Queenscage of the Third Isle, Third-in-line to the Chryselephantine Throne of the Eternal Empire, and Chosen of Athena,” I introduced myself, a smile that was smaller than it should be settling on my lips. “Pleasure.”

Operations have been executed in Honos. Proceed there immediately.

—Greta

Love,

Ara & Josie & Greta (the Great)

(The peacock has left the palace with relevant documents. Await further orders while assessing the situation. Do not reveal yourself.)

(P.S.: we all miss you. Greta does, too.)

I missed home. I had no doubt about that.

I also had no doubt that if I returned home, it would be a different home than the one we had before.

There would be no jeers at Cyrus or jests at Orion; no bickering arguments between the latter and Greta; no Nikephoros to keep us all in line from afar. I don’t think I had fully realized the hole each death left behind—the already messed-up dynamic we had between all of us had twisted further, and I was sure that when I came home there would be less jest and more manipulation: Greta’s decision to make me Grand Duchess had proven that this went beyond the label of family.

There had been no time for us to become cohesive—for me, at least. The others had known each other for at least five years, some even decades, and I couldn’t relate to the thing that was grief that I was sure the others would feel.

Sure, they would continue on with their smiles and masquerades, but I had felt genuine sadness in Greta and the others—not actual melancholy, but an acknowledged hole that they all hid well.

Was the guilt really justified? I just needed to move on, box it in, just like the others. It was just inexperience, that I was hung up on the fact that we were family. It meant something, but that something needed to be nothing; otherwise I would crack. Again.

Coward.

Yes, it was fear.

And so what if I was afraid?

“Do you think Mari will hate me?” I spoke into the night—and Xandros. “I mean, likely at least someone he cared about would be in that explosion. And I was the one who thought of it, right? I don’t know how Anaxeres and Petra handled it, but there has to be some hate somewhere.” My hands went to the ring on my left hand, fingers twisting the piece atop it. “He won’t come to us anymore, then.”

Xandros peered at me strangely.

“I mean, there’s always the possibility, Boss,” he said after a while. “You’re talking about the guy, right? Tall, handsome, built pretty? The praetor?”

Built pretty. I snorted. “Yeah, the pretty boy,” I confirmed. “I’d prefer if he didn’t hate me, strangely enough. Both personally and professionally.” If Greta really did want to extend the protectorate to the Republic, Julian would be the best choice to lead it, if he came to our side. And if everything worked out, he would be by my side, which meant I had a stake in the Republic’s administration.

“Do you...like like him?” asked Xandros, raising his eyebrows. “Like, genuinely?”

“I can learn to,” I responded with a smile, strolling the streets. “And doesn’t that make all the difference?”

Political marriages were, after all, the norm. It had been drummed into me from a young age—I think it had been one of the Williams scions that had been groomed to be a ducal consort, or someone of the like.

Love?

“It’s not that love doesn’t matter,” I said aloud. “It’s just that it’s either a can not, do not, or will not. I can’t, don’t, or won’t love, not in that way. Or, at least, not now. But I don’t really care either which way. If I happen to love him, then that’s great. If I suddenly happen to love you or Mercy over time, then I’ll marry whoever if they accept.”

Time—and that conversation with Josie—had helped me realize that. Love was love, but it didn’t necessarily need to be eternal romance in order to be classified as that.

Xandros’ eyes startled.

“Don’t worry,” I cut him off before he spoke, “I don’t love you, relax. But, the point is: maybe I’ll love someone down the road. Or maybe never. But political advantages can certainly help on how much I spend time with a potential candidate, no?”

Julian hating me would be an obstacle.

My minion tilted his head. “You can feel whatever you want to feel about love, Boss. But based on you not wanting pretty boy to hate you, I think you care about him enough to not want him to die? In that case, when we get to Honos, you guys should probably talk.”

Talk.

“It isn’t just Mari,” I said. “I need to talk with a lot of people. And listen.” A pause, as the cool night hung in the air. “Yeah,” I conceded, “I need to listen to a lot of people.”

Xandros hummed. “Hey, Boss,” he began, “you know, Mercy and I have been talking, and we’re kind of worried about you.”

That made me snort. Real smooth. “I mean,” I conceded, “it’s not like there isn’t anything to worry about. But, come on, it’s me. I’m supposed to be the one worrying whether I’ll have to replace you guys, not the other way around.”

The boy shrugged. “You can be sad, Boss. Or angry. We’re not going to tell you how to feel, but…”

He trailed off.

“I get,” he changed course, “that you want to be—” he looked around and lowered his voice even though there was barely anyone around “—Empress. But if you’re destroying yourself to get there—if you’re letting yourself get destroyed from the inside out—there won’t be much of you left to sit on the throne, Boss.”

I turned and faced him.

“You think I don’t know that, Xandros?” I asked, eyebrows raised.

“If you knew—if you saw yourself at the end of your path,” he responded, “you would care.”

His eyes were calm, almost serene.

I laughed.

“Haven’t you heard, then?”

I leaned closer.

“The Ruler is blind.”

It was evening when the legionaries came with questions and answers. I’d ignored Xandros on the way back for the sake of theatricality, but I really was pissed off. At Xandros, at Greta, at myself—but I met them at the door with the same smile as always, moved through the pleasantries and moral quibbling, and took in the chosen soldiers who looked guilty, tired, or both.

After greeting them and diluting the antidote, I explained the logistics behind everything, ignored their turbulent moral states, and hightailed it out of there—at least, that was what I had been planning to do, before the first legionary pulled me aside and brusquely asked about the Oath.

“Ah,” I said, very intelligently. “The Oath. Of course.”

For an Ability that assumedly gave me perfect memory, it really was shitty when it came to these things.

“I’ll have Mercy draft something up, I guess,” I conceded with a nonchalant wave. “I’ll get it ready soon, then.” A pause. “Do you know if your Cohort’s horse-boy got poisoned?” I asked, after a while. “Not the person who attends to Ralla, the other one. A bit too scrawny, grins a bit too crooked, built like a beanpole?”

The legionary blinked, before scratching her head. “I don’t think I’ve seen him around since we questioned him,” she said, slowly. “After the horses turned up dead, and people started getting sick, we interrogated him and he seemed pretty alive. Said that he didn’t bring anyone worth mentioning around.” She narrowed her eyes. “Although that seems like a lie, now.”

I smiled. “Then he took my advice,” I murmured. “Well that’s a first.” My eyes flickered to the bodies in the parlor. “Is there anything else?” I met the legionary’s eyes, dark and flickering.

“There is,” she confirmed. “I can recover without your plan, but even then...why are you doing this?” Before I opened my mouth, she continued, “I don’t care that you’re doing it for selfish reasons, but you’re just a kid. What are you, seventeen? Sixteen? I’m not asking you about your sob story, I’m asking you whether this is out of temporary guilt, or something else. Because if it’s temporary, you can yank this carpet from under their feet any time, and all the guilt they’re feeling—it’ll kill them, even if you heal them.”

She was concerned.

She cared about them.

I looked at her face—it was grim and determined.

“I don’t want anyone else to die because of me,” I said. “Just for today. But I keep my promises, and I respect people’s choices. I won’t break this oath, and they will get better.” I turned, and patted the legionary on the shoulder. Unsurprisingly, she recoiled. “I swear it by my honor,” I continued, firmly.

“A villain’s honor,” she muttered. “But yes.” A pause. “Thank you. For this, only.” There was still hate in her eyes.

I accepted it with a nod, my smile vanishing as I reached to exit the room.

Hate.

What a strange thing.

When I came to my bed that night—alone, for once: I had bade Mercy a farewell that was met with careful concern—I sat and looked at the night and realized I was scared.

It was the same fear that had propelled me to gamble in Tyche, settling in like a cold anticipation for a plummeting fall. It was staring me in the face, that abyss: a gaping grin of a maw, carved in the mask of death and all that it brought with. The moment before the jagged teeth sank in your arm: a pure, terrifying certainty that the bite would hurt, and it would hurt badly.

I would fall—I would, could, and perhaps should—like Cyrus and Orion, gone to the whispers of ghosts long gone, buried under the grave and inscribed as a sister, daughter, and loving friend.

Written off in the annals of history.

Forgotten.

That nightmare sunk into my bones, the fear of being forgotten, now with a new taste I wasn’t sure I liked: the fear of death.

And, I supposed, another, more furtive of a shadow: the fear that I would die without anyone to know what I had been through.

If Greta succeeded, there would be no more Chosen. There would be no more Cages, no more Seraphinas, no more Cyruses and Orions. That feeling settled in me like a steely knot, twisting and turning like string. The Empire would be better for it, I knew, but there would be no more families. No more laughs, no more knives, no more sleeping with one eye open.

No more family paintings, diplomatic dinners gone wrong, or tea parties—there would be no more Greta chasing Orion around in thinly veiled rage, no more Arathis to invoke her wrath and Josephine to fan the flames, no more Cyrus trying to strike me down with Lightning. Three Daycycles—and counting—since the Cage, but it had been fun. Interesting, exhilarating, whatever you called it, it wasn’t boring.

There would be no more that for the other generations. There would also be no more blood stained in their nightmares, or speeches haunting their dreams, ghosts and wraiths wailing their words of wisdom. The Song wouldn’t hum in their ears, and that promise wouldn’t lay at the end of their paths: those accursed golden bars wouldn’t follow them to the ends of the world, and for that I had nothing else to say.

See, there was that feeling again.

That feeling, that I had passed the point of no return, but it was so wrong and unsettling that I ignored it.

Because I could turn back—I could turn away from the sun and fall back onto the cliff, play along and be killed and reviled: I could wait, until someone put their hands around my neck and decided that was enough with me and that I had served my purpose.

Because now turning back was a choice that had never been a choice.

Because I needed to carry on, otherwise all the people I’d killed and used would’ve died for nothing, and I didn’t get to decide when to turn back.

Only cowards turned back.

And Seraphina Inevita Queenscage was many things—loved, hated, feared.

But she was no coward.